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How do you know its the right choice?

How do you know whether to quit the job you're in and startup? How do you know whether to drop everything and travel the world or stick to your current lifestyle? How do you know whether to take that job that offers less money and more time and travel or to double down on your current job and work hard to climb up the ladder?

How do you know which is the right choice?

Its simple. You don't.

You can weigh in the pros and the cons and arrive at a decision that seems to yield the most value when the future plays out. But that comes with assumptions galore.

Whatever decision you make, you are always looking over your shoulder to ensure that all of the assumptions in your analysis holds. If some of them start showing signs of not holding, you begin to question the decision and circle back to analysing what's the right choice to make now - to stick with it or to evaluate other options.

Since there is no way of knowing what is the right choice, I have found that it is better to make the choice that makes you happy.

That's how kids make their choices.

Give a five year old the choice between staying home and playing with her toys and attending school and she is likely to pick playing with her toys. In order to get the child to make the 'right' choice, parents coerce her into deciding to pick school by instilling fear. Fear that goes like, "If you don't go to school, you won't score good marks, without which you won't get admitted in a good college, without which you won't get a good job'.

There are two ways of growing up from being that kid that chooses to play with her toys rather than go to school.

One, grow up by internalizing that fear of an unfavourable future. The other is to constantly be parented by friends, by society, and well, by parents too, who keep reminding you to fear the unfavourable future.

But the best way to grow up is to learn to give up that fear altogether. This can happen either by embracing an unpredictable future or to learn to love things we currently don't. A mixture of both is the best bet.

When the time comes to lie down in the grave, all that living up to the standards of society and the money and the reputation won't matter. All the happiness won't matter either.